Aquinas as an Advocate of Abortion? The Appeal to ‘Delayed Animation’ in Contemporary Christian Ethical Debates on the Human Embryo

The Gradual Abandonment of Delayed Animation

The influence of the idea of delayed animation petered out in the mid-nineteenth century, but its zenith was much earlier—in the thirteenth century—and it was arguably already on the wane by the sixteenth century. The effect of the Renaissance and the Reformation had been to undermine the authority of scholastic theology and of traditions not rooted in Scripture. A fresh reading of the Scriptures in the original languages showed the LXX distinction not to be present in the Hebrew of Exodus, while a fresh reading of Augustine showed him to be careful not to deny the possible presence of the soul from conception. ²⁰ Much more significantly, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century dislodged reliance on Aristotelian natural science. The scientific investigations of William Harvey and other early modern scientists gave the reason for tracing the beginning of human life to the moment of fertilisation of a human egg. ²¹ Subsequent scientific advances (such as the twentieth-century discovery of the mechanism of genetic inheritance) only served to reinforce the significance of fertilisation and the fundamental continuity of development from conception until birth.

By the nineteenth century when the first statutes were passed against abortion, references to ‘quick with child’ were already anachronistic and somewhat of an embarrassment to doctors. In the mid-nineteenth century, criminal law (for example, the Offenses Against the Person Act 1837) and Catholic Canon Law (in 1869) caught up with biology. By the time the World Medical Association agreed in 1948 to ‘maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of its conception’ ²² there was a broad medical, philosophical, legal, secular and religious consensus on the identification of fertilisation as the beginning of human life.

The Recent Re-emergence of Delayed Animation

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was thus a broad consensus that human life began at conception. However, among Roman Catholic theologians there were two factors that sustained interest in delayed animation during this period.

The acceptance of delayed animation among Catholic theologians and philosophers was undoubtedly assisted by the decision by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 ‘to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences’. ²³ He effectively established Thomism as the norm for philosophy and theology within the Catholic Church, a decision given the force of law in the 1917 Code of Canon Law. ²⁴ This encouraged a generation of philosophers and theologians to see Thomas as the most reliable guide in all matters excepting only those which had been condemned unequivocally (such as Thomas’s denial of the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary). ²⁵ As Thomas Aquinas explicitly held that the rational soul was given only after the organs of the embryo were formed, this opinion therefore attracted support from a new generation of philosophers and theologians. It is this that explains the vigorous defence of delayed animation by writers such as Mercier, ²⁶ Reany, ²⁷ Hering ²⁸ and, later, Maritain. ²⁹

The second factor to revive interest in delayed animation was the influence of evolutionary biology. In the nineteenth century Ernst Haeckel had applied ideas of evolution to the embryo. His slogan was ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, that is, the stages of development of the embryo repeat the stages of evolution (from simple organism, to fish, to amphibian, to simple mammal, to primate etc.). ³⁰ Haeckel’s ideas have long since been abandoned by scientists and he had little direct influence on theologians. However, the more general suggestion that there is some parallel between the development of the human species and the development of an individual human being has remained a powerful idea among philosophers and theologians. This has seemed to some to imply that humanness is not present from the beginning but is something that emerges at a certain critical point in the upward movement of complexity.

The writer perhaps most strongly associated with a synthesis of Catholic theology and evolutionary biology was the Jesuit theologian and palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Although he wrote from the 1920s until his death in 1955, most of his works were not published at the time due to their controversial nature. It was only in the period after his death that de Chardin’s influence was felt in Catholic theology, both directly through his published works, ³¹ and through the writings of confreres such as Karl Rahner. Rahner took from Teilhard the term ‘hominisation’, which he used both for the gradual evolution of the human species and the gradual development of the human embryo. ³²

Support for delayed animation among Catholic theologians seems to have increased in the period between 1960 and 1970 as is evident from the shift of opinion of Barnard Häring. In 1963 he opined that, ‘the antiquated opinion of Aristotle is at best only slightly probable. To my mind it is utterly untenable at least on the practical moral level.’ ³³ However the translator added a note in 1967 stating that ‘Some modern theologians and philosophers still hold that the soul is created (and infused) sometime after the fertilisation of the ovum by the male sperm’ ³⁴ and quoting with approval Richard McCormick (from 1965), ‘The theory of retarded or delayed animation is unquestionably a tenable and respectable theory.’ ³⁵ By 1972 Häring had come to the view that, ‘the theory which presents hominisation as dependent on the development of the cerebral cortex has its own probability’. ³⁶

In Secular Bioethics

Perhaps the first proponent of a form of DAAA was Joseph Fletcher in 1954 in his ground-breaking work Morals and Medicine. ⁴³ This book is sometimes regarded as the first example of modern bioethics. Fletcher was at that time an Episcopalian and described his approach as ‘personalist’. ⁴⁴ However, shortly after writing Situation Ethics in 1966 he disavowed Christianity in favour of secular humanism. He has exercised an enduring influence over secular bioethics.

Fletcher invoked the history of belief in delayed animation in the Catholic tradition as a way to undermine the credibility of contemporary Catholic teaching. He did not give this argument particular prominence. Rather, it was but one example of his use of Catholic sources against Catholic moral conclusions. Nevertheless, Fletcher was important for introducing the idea that contemporary Catholic teaching on abortion had ‘some difficulty with St. Augustine’ ⁴⁵ because of Augustine’s belief in delayed animation.

Fletcher’s own view was that, ‘a fetus is not a moral or personal being since it lacks freedom, self-determination, rationality, the ability to choose either means or ends, and knowledge of circumstances’. ⁴⁶ As many of these human capacities are not exercised until well into infancy, Fletcher opened the door not only to abortion but also to infanticide. Fletcher’s ideas were taken up by a later generation of secular bioethicists including Michael Tooley, ⁴⁷ John Harris ⁴⁸ and Peter Singer. ⁴⁹ Nevertheless, Peter Singer has defended the Catholic Church against the charge of inconsistency in regard to delayed animation. The Church’s apparent change of mind occurred not because of its abandonment of ethical or philosophical principles but because these principles were now informed by a new biology:

But the reason for the church’s change of view on the stage of pregnancy at which abortion becomes the killing of a human being was surely, within the terms of its own view of the sanctity of human life, a sound one. Once modern biology had shown the actual nature of early human development, the church had little choice but to abandon its support for the unscientific Aristotelian embryology of Thomas Aquinas. (Liberal Catholics will hardly want to condemn one of the few instances in which the church has been willing to modify its views in the light of new scientific knowledge.) ⁵⁰

The use of DAAA by Fletcher and by other secular bioethicists obscures a more fundamental difference between their approach to bioethics and that of the Catholic ethical tradition, that is, the question of whether the life of every human being is morally inviolable. Singer is perceptive in acknowledging the logic of the Catholic ethical tradition given its fundamental principles, and hence the weakness of this particular form of DAAA. The Church is being consistent in extending the principle of the inviolability of human life to all beings who are identified as members of the human species.

In Legal Contexts

Another early context for the emergence of DAAA was among lawyers, beginning in 1957 with Glanville Williams, then reader in law at Cambridge University. In his book The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law ⁵¹ under the influence of Fletcher, ⁵² Williams invoked delayed animation as an example of the alleged inconsistency of contemporary and historical Catholic attitudes to nascent human life. However he also introduced another form of DAAA, not as a reductio ad absurdum of Catholic beliefs but as a precedent for the common law distinction between abortion before and after ‘quickening’.

Williams’s book is not a systematic work of legal philosophy, but the argument seems to be that the distinction of early and later abortion, which was once held for theological reasons, may still be followed for a different reason. This reason, according to Williams, is the ‘humane, ethical, and parental feeling of the plain man [that] leads him to wish to extend the protection of the criminal law not only to the newly born child but to the viable child before birth’. ⁵³ However, this appeal to the feeling of the ‘plain man’ is a weak argument. Furthermore it is disingenuous for Williams to appeal to cultural abhorrence of infanticide when he himself attributes this attitude among modern secular people to the ‘legacy of their religious heritage’. ⁵⁴ In contrast, Williams regards infanticide, in the case of ‘a viable monster or an idiot child’, ⁵⁵ as entirely justifiable.

While Glanville Williams was not clear or consistent in his use of DAAA, his argument was taken up by others, most notably Eugene Quay and Cyril Means, ⁵⁶ who construed the quickening distinction as defining a ‘common law liberty’ to abortion prior to that point. Such is the value of precedent within a legal context that jurists who wished to liberalise the abortion law openly appealed to this distinction despite its acknowledged religious provenance.

The most politically significant effect of this form of DAAA was in helping to shape the United States Supreme Court judgement Roe v. Wade (1973) which declared unconstitutional all existing statutes restricting first- and second-trimester abortion. Justice Blackmun in his opinion cited Williams, Quay and Means, and was unafraid to venture into theology, stating for example, that ‘The theological debate was reflected in the writings of St. Augustine, who made a distinction between embryo inanimatus, not yet endowed with a soul, and embryo animatus. He may have drawn upon Exodus 21:22.’ ⁵⁷

The form of DAAA developed by Glanville Williams and cited with approval in Roe v. Wade is effectively an attempt to appeal to the authority of the delayed-animation tradition as precedent, through its impact on the English common law. However there is a fundamental flaw in this form of the argument: If ‘the importance attached to quickening rests on what now appears to be a rather obvious superstition’, ⁵⁸ then it cannot reasonably function as a moral or legal precedent. ⁵⁹

The form of DAAA developed by Glanville Williams and other jurists was essentially opportunistic. It was an appeal to a tradition the basis of which they did not share. It is no doubt for this reason that legal forms of DAAA are marked by poor historical ⁶⁰ and theological scholarship. ⁶¹ A credible form of DAAA requires proponents who have sufficient intellectual sympathy with the Christian tradition. ⁶² This is not generally true of secular expressions of the argument but it is true in two other contexts: among Anglican scholars; and among Roman Catholics.

Appeal to the Christian Tradition

DAAA typically takes the form of appeal to Christian tradition. It is for this reason that it has not generally been prominent among most of the Churches of the Reformation, which from their foundation have been critical of appeal to tradition as a basis for Christian doctrine, and have preferred to base doctrine directly on Scripture. Liberal Protestantism has added an emphasis on contemporary experience and on biblical criticism, but has remained critical of tradition as a source of Christian authority. ⁶³ In contrast, the Church of England and the Churches that comprise the Anglican Communion are more open to arguments from tradition, though of course this is more so in some strands of Anglicanism than others. ⁶⁴

As a secular legal form of DAAA played a role in the key United States Supreme Court decision on abortion, so an Anglican form played a role in the legalisation of abortion in the United Kingdom. The Abortion Act 1967 was preceded by an influential report of the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility in 1965, Abortion: An Ethical Discussion. This report concluded that ‘in certain circumstances abortion can be justified’. ⁶⁵ This conclusion was reached by reflection on the current social situation ‘in the light of traditional discussions’. ⁶⁶ The report rejected the idea that ‘“the soul enters the body” at some point in time’ ⁶⁷ but argued that the moral status of the embryo increased gradually pari passu with biological development. This gradualist principle was then read back into the traditional distinctions: ‘In the old tradition the principle was recognised, as has been seen, in the distinction between an animate and an inanimate foetus, and between pregnancy before and after quickening.’ ⁶⁸

The secretary to that committee was Gordon Dunstan, a prominent Anglican moral theologian, who would invoke a similar form of DAAA twenty years late in a related moral and political controversy. In 1984, he submitted a paper to the Warnock Committee, a version of which was subsequently published in the Journal of Medical Ethics. ⁶⁹ There he argued that ‘the claim to absolute protection for the human embryo “from the beginning” is a novelty in the Western, Christian and specifically Roman Catholic moral traditions’. ⁷⁰ He appealed to various examples of graded status but centrally to the concept of delayed animation. Dunstan’s argument was influential in the debate leading up to the passing of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 which permitted experimentation on human embryos. The same argument was reiterated ten years later by Archbishop Peter Carnley, Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, ⁷¹ and by Bishop Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, ⁷² in the context of a new debate over whether to permit the cloning of human embryos for research. In 2001, Bishop Harries was appointed chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Stem Cell Research, which devoted an appendix of its report to a statement of Dunstan’s argument: ‘the fact that the Christian tradition, for so much of its history, made a distinction between the moral status of the unformed and the formed embryo, and thought of the human person in the full sense coming only with a delayed ensoulment, remains significant: it reflects a valid moral distinction’. ⁷³

The structure of Dunstan’s version of DAAA was similar to that of Glanville Williams but it was the work of independent scholarship ⁷⁴ and included a few characteristically Anglican touches, for example in mentioning Anglo-Saxon penitentials as well as the English common law tradition, and in paying more attention to Augustine than to Aquinas. Dunstan’s scholarship was far superior to that of Glanville Williams but it is open to some of the same criticisms, not least that it sought to appeal to historical precedent while bypassing the key question of whether the notion of delayed animation was valid in the context of contemporary biology. The moral tradition to which Dunstan appealed was explicitly based on a theological anthropology, itself derived from philosophical reflection on ancient biology. That biology is antiquated, and to attempt an argument from precedent in the absence of a contemporary philosophical anthropology is to build a house on sand. It is an argument without rational foundation. ⁷⁵

Appeal to Evolutionary Biology

Bishop Ian Ramsey, who chaired the 1965 Board of Social Responsibility committee, was noted both for speaking on ethical and social questions, and for his interest in the relationship between science and religion. This alerts us to another form of DAAA to develop within the Anglican tradition. While Dunstan’s argument gained significant attention during the debates over embryo experimentation, arguably the most prominent Anglican voice in support of such experimentation was that of Archbishop John Habgood. His academic background was not in ecclesiastical history or moral theology but in biology. As noted above, one of the factors that promoted support for delayed animation (or analogous concepts) among theologians was reflection on the theory of evolution. This was certainly true of Habgood whom Mary Warnock described as a ‘Darwinian gradualist’: ‘“Christianity”, he said, “no more requires us to believe that human life begins at a certain moment than it requires belief in the Garden of Eden.”’ ⁷⁶

Habgood’s version of DAAA in favour of experimentation on human embryos is representative of many Anglicans who have written on the relationship of science and religion. A similar view is taken by John Polkinghorne, ⁷⁷ Donald Mackay, ⁷⁸ and several others. ⁷⁹ A typical move of these thinkers is to view consciousness and other distinctively human functions as emergent properties of complex hierarchical systems. This frame is then applied both to evolution and to embryonic development. In each case life is not regarded as specifically human life until it has reached a certain level of biological complexity. From this anthropological claim, the moral conclusion is then drawn that early human embryos can be used for the benefit of fully developed human beings.

This form of DAAA, unlike that of Dunstan, is rooted in anthropology and in a broader understanding of the relationship of science and religion and is thus a much more serious argument. Nevertheless, it relies on a parallel between evolution and developmental biology which is questionable both in relation to biology and in relation to philosophy. Biologically, development is clearly distinct from evolution in that the process is strongly teleological, moving towards a determinate end point. It seems prima facie that to regard the human embryo as though it were morally equivalent to a simple nonhuman organism is a mistake. However, to resolve the issue would require careful philosophical analysis and it is here that many writers on science and religion tend to be weak. Many are ordained scientists who have come directly from natural science to theology without higher studies in philosophy.

The form of DAAA propounded by Habgood and others raises important questions of how to relate theological anthropology to modern biology. Nevertheless, without a more robust philosophical analysis of the issues, the argument remains at the level of suggestive parallels rather than of rigorous demonstration. This gap could perhaps be bridged through a greater engagement with Catholics writing on science and religion, in particular those in the Thomist tradition, which draws heavily both on theological and on philosophical modes of thought. ⁸⁰ However, before examining Catholic forms of DAAA it is important to acknowledge the diversity of theological views within the Anglican tradition.

Diversity within the Anglican Tradition

The arguments put forward by figures such as Ramsey, Habgood, Dunstan, Polkinghorne and Harries proved influential in part because they were useful to a succession of governments who wished to have ecclesial endorsement of ethically contentious policy proposals. However, it should not be thought that this approach represents the only, or the official, or even the predominant Anglican understanding of the human embryo. When the Abortion Act 1967 finally came to a vote in the House of Lords, Bishop Ian Ramsey, who had been the chair of the Board of Social Responsibility committee, was the only Anglican bishop to vote in favour of the social clause. Similarly, in February 1985, the General Synod rejected the gradualist position set out by the Board in its response to the Warnock Committee. ⁸¹

Subsequent to this vote, the Board published a more balanced report Personal Origins (1985), which sets out two views, one which ‘takes its point of reference in the continuity of the individual subject’ ⁸² and the other which ‘argues that there are attributes which must be possessed by a developing embryo before it can be called a person’. ⁸³ The committee came to recognise ‘in both these approaches the possibility of a scientifically judicious and theologically responsible set of convictions’. ⁸⁴ Only in the context of endorsing this report did the Synod accept the value of the Warnock Report recommendation for a regulatory body to ‘continue the debate on the moral aspects of technologies concerned with human embryology and fertilisation’. ⁸⁵

The 1985 Report Personal Origins represents a significant achievement in recognising two strands of theology within the Anglican tradition. ⁸⁶ More frequently the Board of Social Responsibility (and its successor department) has reflected only the gradualist view and has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of other views present in Personal Origins and in votes of the Synod. For example, in 2007 the Mission and Public Affairs Council wrote that ‘we do not regard the pre-implantation embryo as yet having the same status of a person made in the image of God’. ⁸⁷ This may be contrasted with the resolution of the General Synod of 1983 (reiterated in 1988) ‘that all human life, including life developing in the womb, is created by God in his own image and is therefore to be nurtured, supported and protected’. ⁸⁸ It should also be noted that in 2001 Archbishop Rowan Williams was among a number of Anglican theologians to sign an ecumenical statement declaring that ‘Though penalties have varied, the Christian tradition has always extended the principle of the sacredness of human life to the very beginning of each human being, and never allowed the deliberate destruction of the fruit of conception.’ ⁸⁹

Appeal to Catholic Tradition

It was in the 1960s that some Catholic scholars began to suggest that delayed animation might render abortion or embryo destruction morally acceptable, given sufficiently grave circumstances. ⁹⁰ By the end of that decade there were, for the first time, clear examples of DAAA within the Catholic tradition. One of the leading proponents was the Jesuit Joseph Donceel in a series of articles, the most significant appearing in Theological Studies in 1970 under the title, ‘Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization’. ⁹¹ The Catholic moral theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill refers to this as ‘one of the first proposed revivals of delayed hominisation’. ⁹² Much of Donceel’s article is devoted to an account of the Catholic tradition aiming to show that it provides strong precedent for belief in delayed animation. ⁹³ The article then concludes with a quotation from Abortion: An Ethical Discussion, invoking ecumenical considerations as a way to introduce the moral claim that delayed animation supports a more permissive attitude to abortion: ‘Might it not be terminated occasionally for very grave reasons, the reasons which other Christian churches consider sufficient?’ ⁹⁴

Donceel’s articulation of a Catholic form of DAAA was followed by a number of other scholars including Charles Curran, ⁹⁵ Carol Tauer, ⁹⁶ Daniel Maguire ⁹⁷ and Daniel Dombrowski. ⁹⁸ Though there are differences in approach and style between these authors (Curran, for example, being more restrained in his conclusions, Maguire more overtly polemical) they have in common a form of DAAA that is an appeal to the Roman Catholic tradition by writers who situate themselves within that tradition. These authors also have in common the use of the conceptual framework of probabilism. This was the doctrine that it was lawful for a Catholic to follow a ‘probable’ opinion (that is, one based on the reasonable arguments of trustworthy authorities) even if the opposite view appears to be equally probable. Curran, Tauer and others argued that, using this approach, the fact that many reputable theologians (such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and, more recently, Karl Rahner and Bernard Häring) had supported delayed animation made this opinion ‘probable’. This would permit Catholics in good conscience to act on the view that early abortion was not homicide.

This Catholic form of DAAA has been very successful in making the transition from scholarly to popular contexts. This has been facilitated by abortion advocacy organisations such as Catholics for a Free Choice. Among their most popular publications is a short booklet by Jane Hurst entitled The History of Abortion in the Catholic Church: The Untold Story. ⁹⁹ This has gone through several reprints and is frequently quoted. The same theme has also been picked up by writers who are alienated from the Church on a broader range of issues, of whom Uta Ranke-Heinemann ¹⁰⁰ and Peter de Rosa ¹⁰¹ are good examples. Quotations and paraphrases of such authors and of academic activists such as Daniel Maguire and Daniel Dombrowski have subsequently been disseminated by magazine articles, pamphlets and, by that most viral of media, the internet.

Of all forms of DAAA by appeal to precedent, this form is the most sophisticated, far more so than that of Williams or even that of Dunstan. The historical scholarship especially of Charles Curran is careful and detailed and he has clear intellectual sympathy with the tradition to which he appeals, especially in relation to seventeenth-century probabilists. Nevertheless, while the Catholic tradition provides a precedent for believing in delayed animation, it provides very little precedent for permitting abortion prior to the purported moment of animation. Modern advocates of DAAA appeal to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, but neither Augustine nor Thomas Aquinas advocated tolerance of abortion. If precedent is to be found for DAAA, this cannot be found in the tradition in general. At most it could be argued there is some precedent for DAAA among some ‘laxist’ Catholic moral theologians in the seventeenth century. However, those opinions which overtly advocated abortion prior to animation were highly controversial at the time, and the clearest examples of early-modern DAAAs were condemned by the Holy Office in 1679. ¹⁰²

The condemnation of laxism points to another problem with the appeal to probabilism, in that the framework of probabilism, in its original historical context, presupposed acceptance of the authority of Rome to set limits on legitimate opinion. This tradition of thought had never allowed an opinion could count as ‘probable’ if it had been explicitly condemned by Rome. ¹⁰³ To advocate the permissibility of direct abortion thus requires moving beyond probabilism into what may be called a theology of dissent.

As with the arguments of Williams and Dunstan, Donceel’s DAAA by appeal to precedent suffers more fundamentally from a reliance on earlier thinkers who were reflecting on ancient biology. A credible DAAA has to move beyond mere appeal to precedent and to show that delayed animation, or some analogous idea, is defensible in a contemporary context. Furthermore, given that what is at issue is the deliberate destruction of human embryos, metaphysical and ethical conclusions about the status of the embryo would need to be demonstrated with a high degree of confidence.

Rising to this challenge, a number of contemporary thinkers within the Catholic tradition have propounded anthropological forms of DAAA, primarily invoking the philosophical and moral principles of Thomas Aquinas. Such attempts fall roughly into two categories, those that appeal to brain-related criteria and those that are concerned with individuation. ¹⁰⁴

Brain-related Accounts of Animation

Donceel is significant not only for introducing into Catholic discussion a form of DAAA by appeal to precedent, but also for articulating a defense of a form of delayed animation based on Thomist principles. Donceel not only appealed to the tradition, he also argued that delayed animation was implied by Thomistic philosophical principles if these were applied to contemporary biology. He preferred the term ‘delayed hominisation’ to delayed animation, in part because Thomas held that the embryo was animated with a soul (but not a specifically human soul) from conception, in part in deference to Karl Rahner and Teihard de Chardin. ¹⁰⁵ The use of the term hominisation also evokes the analogy between embryological development and human evolution. Nevertheless, while Donceel regarded evolution as making delayed hominisation ‘more probable’, ¹⁰⁶ this analogy is secondary to his key argument, which is that delayed hominisation is implied by a hylomorphic conception of man.

If form and matter are strictly complementary, as hylomorphism holds, there can be an actual human soul only in a body endowed with the organs required for the spiritual activities of man. ¹⁰⁷

Other philosophers who have followed Donceel and who have also appealed explicitly and in detail to Thomas Aquinas are Michael Coughlan, ¹⁰⁸ Jean Porter, ¹⁰⁹ Dombrowski and Deltete, ¹¹⁰ and Pasnau. ¹¹¹ For such writers, appeal to Thomas was not merely opportunistic as they showed a genuine interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas and, in at least some cases, had published serious monographs on other elements of Thomas’s thought. Nevertheless, if the appreciation of Thomas was genuine, these authors also wished to use his thought to promote a more permissive attitude towards practices such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research. In this they were very different from an earlier generation of Thomists (such as Mercier, de Dorlodot, Hering, Reany and Maritain) and indeed from Thomas himself, who defended delayed animation but not DAAA.

Donceel defends the idea that the embryo is not a human person until he or she has the organs necessary for rational functioning, that is, until the development of ‘the brain, and especially the cortex’. ¹¹² Similarly Couglan, Porter, Dombrowski, Deltete and Pasnau focus on the capacity for rational functioning or at least for consciousness. This approach is superficially similar to the distinction between a human being and a ‘person’ made by secular bioethicists such as Fletcher, Tooley, Singer and Harris. However, the secular bioethical school of thought is distinct from Thomism both in its origin and its character. The ‘personhood’ philosophers (if they can be termed such) were influenced by Locke’s definition of a person: ‘most current accounts of the criteria for personhood follow John Locke in identifying self- consciousness coupled with fairly rudimentary intelligence as the most important features’. ¹¹³ They assimilated personhood to personality or memory, to a set of attributes of the person. Hence they could regard the human embryo as a biological human being without this implying that the embryo was a person. In contrast, accounts of personhood, of the kind propounded by Aristotle, Boethius or Thomas Aquinas, understood the person as an individual substance, a member of a natural kind. ¹¹⁴ Hence for a Thomist to deny the early embryo was a person he or she must also have to deny that the embryo was a human being, a being who shared a human nature.

Personhood philosophers have also tended to place the emergence of personhood in infancy, several months after the child is born. Donceel and Thomists who followed his line of thought have strongly resisted the claim that hominisation occurs after the child is born: ‘The Church has condemned this position and rightly so.’ ¹¹⁵ Nevertheless, if what was needed was not the immediate capacity for rational acts (a capacity which would not be demonstrable until long after the child was born), but was an active potential of a more radical kind, then this would seem to be present already in the embryo. This point was emphasised by the moral theologian Norman Ford.

One weakness in Donceel’s position is the unjustified demand for the formation of sense organs and of the brain for rational ensoulment once it is admitted there are no actual rational functions performed for two years. ¹¹⁶

Donceel’s account of delayed hominisation overlooks the significance of the embryonic power of development. From a Thomistic perspective, if a being possesses a power to develop a capacity (for example the power to learn how to speak French) this is sufficient to demonstrate what kind of thing it is (a linguistic animal). This is so, even though the capacity may not yet have been developed. Thomas himself was hampered by the mistaken belief that embryonic development was driven and shaped only from outside, by the power of the male parent through the seed as an instrument. However, if, in line with modern biology, one regards development as a power of the embryo, the possession of this power implies the presence in the embryo of a specifically human nature, and hence a human soul. ¹¹⁷ Pasnau recognised this difficulty for delayed animation and maintained that it was the parent’s DNA in the embryo that played the role that Thomas ascribed to the power in the seed. It transformed the embryo until the embryo became a specifically human animal. ¹¹⁸ However, this abstraction of the DNA from the embryo as a whole, and indeed the abstraction of development from all other vital activities of the embryo, is not tenable as a philosophy of biology.

Individuation-Related Accounts of Animation

Norman Ford criticised Donceel for his supposition that an embryo was not human until he or she acquired a functioning brain, a supposition that seemed to imply that a child was not human until it actually exercised the power of reason. Nevertheless, if the embryo is a human being from the moment that it is a living individual with the power to develop, this still leaves the question of when the embryo becomes a living individual. One alleged proof of delayed hominisation referred to in passing by Donceel ¹¹⁹ was the argument that the early embryo was not yet an individual because it was possible within the first two weeks for one embryo to split so as to form identical twins. From this Donceel concluded that the early embryo was not yet an individual and hence could not be a human individual with a rational soul.

Arguments based on the phenomenon of twinning constitute a distinct form of DAAA based not on the need for a brain but on the concept of individuation. This is a very different form of delayed animation position with different implications. Technically it is not a form of DAAA in that it is not relevant to abortion, because animation is placed around the time of implantation and well before a woman would know she was pregnant and might seek abortion. However, individuation-related arguments have been used to advocate experimentation on human embryos and/or forms of birth control that disrupt the implantation of the embryo. The invocation of delayed animation as a justification for the destruction of human embryos is closely analogous to DAAA and for ease of reference will be termed here an individuation-related DAAA.

The Jesuit Richard McCormick employed an individuation-related DAAA to justify his decision, as a member of the Ethics Advisory Board in 1979, to endorse the use of human embryos who were not older than 14 days. ¹²⁰ McCormick likewise defended the use of the term ‘pre-embryo’ to refer to the first two weeks of human development. ¹²¹ This same argument has been used by a number of other Catholic moral theologians and philosophers including Curran, ¹²² Mahoney ¹²³ and Eberl. ¹²⁴ These authors accepted embryo experimentation but not the liberalisation of abortion law (or, at least, they did not regard delayed animation as a reason for such liberalisation). ¹²⁵

Perhaps the most well-known advocate of the individuation-related argument is Norman Ford in his book When Did I Begin? This book was written in 1988 four years after the Warnock report and two years before embryo experimentation was legalised in the UK by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. Warnock even contributed a foreword to the book. The book has had a significant impact and has helped undermine the case for the protection of the early embryo. ¹²⁶

The possibility of twinning has thus been presented as being incompatible with the individuality of the embryo. However, from a biological perspective individuality need not imply indivisibility, in the sense of the inability to develop into multiple individuals. Many biological organisms are divisible at different stages of development. The early embryo is, from the first, a whole and it develops as a whole. When the cells divide, the daughter cells have position in relation to the whole and the future differentiation of cells is a function of this position. This is so notwithstanding the fact that if some cells are detached from the whole, the embryo can sometimes reorganise so that no harm is done to its development. The early human embryo is certainly a biological individual.

Divisibility is compatible with being a biological individual but it has been alleged to pose deeper problems in relation to the rational soul which, according to Catholic doctrine, is immortal. ¹²⁷ However, if God can create and infuse a soul into the embryo at fertilisation then there is no reason to doubt that God could create and infuse further souls according to the multiplication of bodies. Twinning could then be understood as analogous to asexual reproduction in simpler animals, whereby new life is generated by division rather than by union. According to Thomas, a simple animal has ‘one soul in act and many in potency’. ¹²⁸ Perhaps the same is true of human embryos. This may be unusual and unexpected but both nature and grace include many unusual and unexpected things. What it is not is a contradiction in terms. ¹²⁹

In response to this and other arguments Norman Ford, the most able and articulate defender of delayed animation by reason of delayed individuation, has subsequently abandoned this position. He has come to accept that the potential for twinning does not entail that the developing embryo is not an individual. Hence in 2007 he joined other Catholic bioethicists in affirming that ‘the human embryo, at every stage of development, is a human being with potential and not just a “potential human being”’. ¹³⁰ Similarly Jason Eberl, who in 2000 defended an individuation-related form of DAAA ¹³¹ by 2007 under the influence of Germain Grisez, ¹³² Jan Deckers ¹³³ and others changed his view and came to accept animation at fertilisation. ¹³⁴ The same is true of some proponents of individuation-related DAAA outside the Catholic context, as is evident for example between the first (1996) and second (2005) edition of Gilbert Meilaender’s Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. ¹³⁵

In summary, the claim that ensoulment occurs with brain development seems arbitrary when it is admitted that there is no immediate capacity to exercise rational functions until well into infancy. Furthermore, if the human embryo possesses the inherent power to develop specific human capacities then it cannot be denied that he or she already shares a human nature. On the other hand, if it is granted that the soul may already be present in the embryo by 14 days after fertilisation, then the arguments against pushing this back to fertilisation no longer seem indefeasible. Thus there are many Thomists who now argue that, ‘applying Aquinas’s metaphysical principles to the embryological facts uncovered since his time leads to the conclusion that the human being is present from fertilization on’. ¹³⁶

The consideration of anthropological forms of DAAA also has implications for DAAA by appeal to precedent, authority or probabilism. If the opposite opinion—that ensoulment occurs at fertilisation—is acknowledged to be at least probable in the traditional sense (being based on the reasonable arguments of trustworthy authorities) then what is at stake in choosing between these two opinions is not only liberty of conscience but also the danger of killing what may well be an ensouled human being. This was the conclusion reached by Häring in 1963: ‘every mortal attack upon a life which is at least probably an actual human life manifests the spirit and disposition of a murderer’ ¹³⁷ for, as Grisez would later argue, ‘to be willing to kill what for all one knows is a person is to be willing to kill a person’. ¹³⁸ Interestingly this was the view of Norm Ford, even at the time that he himself held a form of a delayed animation:

The Catholic Church has expressly not committed its teaching authority to the view that the zygote is already a person but admits there are reasonable grounds to support a personal presence in the zygote and consequently teaches, rightly in my view, that the human zygote should be morally and legally protected as a person. ¹³⁹